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Greetings!

'A gaping silken dragon,/Puffed by the wind, suffices us for God./We, not the City, are the Empire's soul:/A rotten tree lives only in its rind.'

Thursday 25 October 2012

Wagons roll...

In lieu of bashing plastic today, I thought I would get some of my toys out of their barracks and photograph them (badly). The nearly finished Afrika Pz III on my table inspired me to review some of my North African campaign kit. Over the last 40 years (!), inspired by the late, much lamented John Sanders, I've collected North Africa vehicles and toy soldiers. The upshot is that I have kit for all stages of the desert war (but with little for Tunisia), from many different sources (including long defunct manufacturers), finished to very different standards, in very different finishes.

First of all, some early British/Commonwealth:



Some DAK armour and support:


Italian transport:



Italian armour from early days until Tunisia in fact.


Italian lorry-borne artillery. This was something of an Italian specialism, and is the subject of the fascinating Italian Truck-Mounted Artillery in Action, by Ralph Riccio and Nicola Pignato (Squadron/Signal, Carrollton, 2010).


Italian recce forces, including two armoured cars from the elite Italian African Police:


Italian medium artillery - another elite arm, often fated to die at their posts:



But, I must kit bash...



10 comments:

  1. Just stumbled on your blog... love the italians! brilliant! i'll pop back from time to time. keep up the good work.

    regards

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    1. My thanks, sir! And your 6mm extravaganza is most impressive - I'm just thankful that my eyes are so poor, or I'd be ordering the tiny fellows myself!

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  2. Very impressive and diverse collection(s) there.

    Cheers, Dave

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    1. Thanks, Dave. The 'diverse' is a bit problematic when it comes to gaming. But I don't really care!

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  3. Impressive! Great collection, the italian stuff in particular is outstanding!

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    1. Cheers, Giano! I've always had a soft spot for Italian kit - I could do with more lorry-borne artillery though.

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  4. A nice collection with some little gems in there. I rather like the different finishes. I'm sure that vehicles in the desert were more ramshackle in appearance than we gamers would like to believe.

    Kind regards, Chris.

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    1. Thanks, Chris. Yes, when you think of the sandpaper action of wind, sand and grit, it was a wonder that anything had much paint on it after a while. There was a recent report on the BBC from Mali, with French troops in some tiny place lost at the edge of the Sahara - the sound of the sand skittering around nearly blocked out the reporter.

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